How does one get an ethnic German, German speaking Ukraine prior to 1900 w/o World War conquest?
This has been tickling my brain recently.
Rephrase your question. Do you want a Germanic Ukraine or German Ukraine?
Because the latter would be impossible without conquering Russia. The closes scenario would be had obscure Austrian volk nationalists succeeded in rehabilitating the Carpathian Highlands (Moravians / Goral / Ruthenian) into Wend Highlanders.
Ethnically German and speaking German or a dialect means German to me, not Germanic. I think Susano will agree with me.Germanic then. That is to say, ethnically German, and speaking German or a dialect thereof.
Ethnically German and speaking German or a dialect means German to me, not Germanic. I think Susano will agree with me.
For Germanic, I once thought about having either the Ostrogoths or another tribe (Gepids maybe) stay in the Ukraine during the Volkenwanderung and spin off into a whole range of East Germanic languages.
I had Austria conquer it during the Crimean War Plus once
Best Regards
Grey Wolf
Ethnically German and speaking German or a dialect means German to me, not Germanic. I think Susano will agree with me.
For Germanic, I once thought about having either the Ostrogoths or another tribe (Gepids maybe) stay in the Ukraine during the Volkenwanderung and spin off into a whole range of East Germanic languages.
Well the Visigoths and Ostrogoths of Spain and Italy (as well as other Germanic tribes) got completely absorbed into the romance language speaking populations, so having them remain in the Ukraine does not necessarily mean that today's inhabitants of the Ukraine would be Germanic. You could argue that the inhabitants of Iberia and Italy had a much more advanced culture but the Goths could still get absorbed later on by the Slavs by sheer weight of numbers.thats actually what popped to my mind at the mention of this...
Goths (Visi and Ostro ) would need to remain on the steps probably with their Gepid kinsman, or perhaps they settle and remain in Dacia instead. Ie they never enter the East Roman Empire then as federoetae (sp) and yes that makes them as Germanic as the English , Dutch or any of the Scandinavians
If the Goths manage to stay, I don't see that happening. The Goths were the ruling elite and would be regarded as having the superior culture. If anything, the Slavs, if they arrive, would be Germanized, not the other way around. The Slavs would just be one more group of poeple joining the already existing mish-mash of Greeks, Sarmatians, Turkish people and other remnants of groups that had passed through the Southern Ukraine.Well the Visigoths and Ostrogoths of Spain and Italy (as well as other Germanic tribes) got completely absorbed into the romance language speaking populations, so having them remain in the Ukraine does not necessarily mean that today's inhabitants of the Ukraine would be Germanic. You could argue that the inhabitants of Iberia and Italy had a much more advanced culture but the Goths could still get absorbed later on by the Slavs by sheer weight of numbers.
If the Goths manage to stay, I don't see that happening. The Goths were the ruling elite and would be regarded as having the superior culture. If anything, the Slavs, if they arrive, would be Germanized, not the other way around. The Slavs would just be one more group of poeple joining the already existing mish-mash of Greeks, Sarmatians, Turkish people and other remnants of groups that had passed through the Southern Ukraine.
While it's best chance to create German Ukraine (Germanic, i.e., Gothic Southern Ukraine existed in OTL (as previous posters have said), but it was just as German as modern Iceland is), even in Catherine's time Germanization was very hard to achieve. The problem is, while the Cossacks emigrated en masse, they always were minority group among the Ukrainians. Most of us at the time were peasants, and living next to the steppe, we had natural head start in its settlement. The Germans were more industrious (and subsidized by the Russian government), but they couldn't outbreed much more numerous Ukrainians, and the Government couldn't (and didn't wish to) stop Ukrainian colonization of the newly-conquered lands. Assimilation of the Slavic majority into culture of their prosperous German neighbours was hardly possible because of impenetrable religious barrier (how do you imagine Protestant propaganda among the Orthodox in the Orthodox empire? Or Orthodox propaganda among the German colonists, for that matter).How about much more massive settlement and colonization process by Catherine the Great. In OTL she invited Germans to settle in central, southern and eastern ukraine after neutralizing cossacks as effective independent force. Perhaps those cossacks migrate even more en masse than they did OTl to Kuban region and slowly left bank ukraine becomes very Germanized.
The Goths were also the ruling elite in Italy and Spain. Hell, in Italy the Ostrogoths even tried a form of apartheid at first to retain their culture. But it still were simply too few. Of course, the Romance culture of Italy was of course, even if kinda beaten down from Roman times, quite sophisticated, which could not be said of the steppe peoples in the area...If the Goths manage to stay, I don't see that happening. The Goths were the ruling elite and would be regarded as having the superior culture.
GErmanicized or GermanicifiedIf anything, the Slavs, if they arrive, would be Germanized, not the other way around.